]]>This morning Scotland got a new newspaper, The National. It’s the daily newspaper that supports an independent Scotland.

The paper is doomed to fail, which will delight some and trouble others, but boys and girls, whichever way your emotions are inclined toward this is irrelevant to the learnings that can be taken from it.

By all accounts the inaugural print edition sold out quickly today, given the sentiment in Scotland currently that’s not a huge surprise.

What is much more surprising is that the digital offering is a paid for subscription. A paid for subscription that is actually a 5 day trial to determine whether a digital offering makes sense or not.

I’ll repeat that, a newspaper trialling whether a digital offering makes sense or not, trialling it in a subscription model, in 2014.

So much for the hub and spoke models of the Telegraph, BBC, Guardian, and blatantly the NZZ was wrong in 2012 when it went digital first. Ok, that’s the last piece of sarcasm I’ll allow myself, it’d be too easy.

It goes without saying that, in 2014, it is entirely unnecessary to ask the question of whether a digital offering is needed for any publication. The real questions that need answering are around the model, launch, growth, sustainability and profitability.

For a new launch, without the benefit of an existing and loyal user base (readership), the subscription model faces an additional hurdle which the likes of the Sun doesn’t have. For me, it’s simply the wrong model.

Let’s assume for a second though that it has to be a subscription model (it doesn’t, but that’s another story all together) and look at the implementation of it. For it is as much the implementation as the concept that lead me to think this title is doomed to failure. The implementation demonstrates clearly that digital is but an afterthought.

Say you’ve been convinced to subscribe to the paper, you’ve got your £1.50 at the ready and click through to hand over your pennies.

What awaits you? A simple Paypal payment page? A contemporary payment gateway that prides itself on minimal clicks, of the kind we’re coming to expect thanks to Amazon, Google, Apple et al? No. Paying the £1.50 requires more clicks than booking a flight with easyJet.

Click one.

First is a form which requires first name, surname, email address, password, password confirmation, house name / number, street, town / city, postcode / ZIP code and country. 10 required fields. On submitting this form.

Click two.

You’re presented with a sagepay page where you’ve to click Proceed in order to get to the page where you can enter your payment details.

Click three.

You need to fill out your street address again, because, well… well, we’ll not dwell on the experience. The second form filled out.

Click four.

You’re then presented with a summary of your order to submit to Verified by Visa.

Click five.

Your password characters entered.

Click six.

Once Verified by Visa has worked its wonders, you’re presented with a thank you page…

Click seven.

Now you can select “which edition you wish to activate”.

Click eight.

Now you select today’s edition.

Click nine.

In typical “are you really sure you want to” fashion, a further action is required to access the edition…

Click ten.

At long last you’ve got the paper in front of you. In Flash. In 2014. Ten clicks.

Before you despair entirely, there is good news, when accessed from an iPhone you are presented with an html5 version. But temper your delight for a moment, the html5 version is image based, that is to say there is no reader view available, zooming doesn’t ‘snap’ to columns of text, you cannot select any text, you cannot share any of the content, other than in screenshot format… Oh, the same applies to the desktop Flash version of it.

Not being able to comment on, share, participate in stories in a world where news is discussed on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and through myriad other social media is, frankly, inane.

There is massive competition for all news sources, across all media, innovation is definitely required to play a winning game. Sadly The National hasn’t innovated in its digital offering. The five day trial will be the resounding failure it is predestined to be, though I do hope that the right lessons are learned rather than a digital offering being written off.

*Apologies for the headline, I miss-counted initially and thought there were nine clicks – so Dante’s gates of hell seemed an apt, if somewhat hyperbolic analogy.

You know how content marketing and social are all you need to do these days?

How you should forget about advertising, forget about search, forget about banner advertising, forget about PR, forget about anything that isn’t content and social?

Well, it’s bollocks, obviously.

Just because hordes of content and social evangelists wax lyrical about the myriad panacean attributes of their latest buzzwords does not make it so.

Consider that, broadly speaking, people find things either by looking for them, or by serendipity. It may seem obvious, but I’ll underline it nonetheless: People looking for things is search, serendipity is more akin to social and content – but also must include advertising, marketing, PR…

So, obviously, only doing content marketing and social, only entertaining clients and prospects entirely ignores anyone who might be searching, but also ignores anyone who may read an article or a review, who may actually interact with a banner ad, Facebook ad or Twitter ad, but also ignores those people offline, who might drive past that billboard, see that TV ad, read that newspaper article, because who cares about those people, right?

Nope, it’s bollocks, cannot be justified.

Obviously, content marketing and social are valuable channels. Equally obviously they cannot, and do not, replace existing channels. The challenge then lies in making them dance beautifully together, rather than pit them against each other.

]]>What a week it has been for fannies in social media, myself included*.

The thing is there’s funny fanny, and then there’s silly fanny.

Fanny number 1:

A lighthearted advert from Irn-Bru which started off on youTube only, has graced our tellyboxes for the past few weeks. No doubt it does offend some people, Irn-Bru adverts generally speaking do get a certain amount of complaints. There would be something sorely lacking from an Irn-Bru advert that got no complaints.

In case you don’t get it, it’s funny because: There’s a play on words (“Fanny” vs. “Fanny”). Despite being a slang term for “vagina” in the UK (I know, dear US friends, you getting it wrong is a source of endless amusement for us too) the context it is put in within the clip is one that most people with a pulse will find difficult not to giggle at. It is the classic “Richard” and “Dick” joke, only more localised.

What’s Special About this Fanny in Social Media?

Well, the ad has been exceptionally well received, even for an Irn Bru ad. It has been viewed a mammoth amount of times, at time of writing over 1.3 million views. Many of these views resulted in a tweetstorm in mid May.

Still, what’s so special about the ad in social media terms?

Well, not content with having a massive viral success with a commercial advert, in itself no mean feat, Irn Bru went a step further. To keep the momentum of the video’s success, and to give a further giggle, Irn Bru brilliantly took the “Fanny” theme a step further and produced 50 fridge magnets… “Fanny magnets”

To get one of these 50 fridge magnets all you had to do was to tweet anything with the hashtag #IMAFANNY. Needless to say, it was tweeted to the point where it trended.

Fanny number 2:

“Fanny” was about the only infantile euphemism which Femfresh did not use for “vagina” in their “whatever you call it, make sure you love it” campaign.

There are manymanymanymany comments on the idiocy of this and the (justified) outrage it has caused.

As is so often the case with poorly thought out campaigns, when the inevitable happened, Femfresh’s reaction was not well thought out either:

Just a short note to tell all recent posters that we have seen your comments and we will be getting back to you.
Whilst we welcome debate, please can we ask that you don’t post anything abusive or use bad language as this contravenes our policies and we will have to delete the posts. Thank you.

Naturally, obviously, inevitably, this led to a backlash that it was indeed Femfresh whose language was bad.

A little planning would have gone a long way, planning for a campaign that doesn’t offend its intended audience, planning for how to react if there is a negative reaction (which in this case was practically guaranteed to happen).

In summary: If you’re going to fanny about on social media, don’t be a dick about it.

]]>Something, or rather someone, has reared their, frankly, blandly mediocre head above the parapet of castle hate.

Samantha Brick, I’m sure you’ll know by now, wrote an article in the DailyMail about how tough her life is as a beautiful woman. The DailyMail, in an inspired moment, realised the potential of this hatebait article and hit the publish button.
Note, I call this hatebait and not linkbait. It will no doubt also attract a massive number of links, but that isn’t the main objective. With linkbait, as the name suggests, the objective is to attract links. With haitbait, well, the objective is just as clear.

Why Publish Hatebait?

Well, to say the article has caught the public attention would be an understatement, there is hardly a positive comment being made about the hapless Ms Brick.

This is primal, people get sucked into having an opinion, not on the marketing lessons, but on whether she actually is pretty or not. What’s also interesting is how seemingly intelligent, famous people lost objectivity and got stuck in.

The outpouring of hatred on Twitter knows no bounds, from the creative and witty to the profane and degrading, practically every tweet about her is scathing:

on a scale of 1 to samantha brick, how delusional(beautiful) are you ??

More Money Questions…

How much money would you need to be given to make everyone hate you for a day on Twitter?

How much more money would you then need to be given to write a further article which perpetuates that hate for a further day?

How much money did Ms Block receive for setting herself up, I wonder?

Hatebait is Rare, Right?

The extreme of this one is, thankfully, relatively rare, yes. It is a near daily phenomenon though.

It’s crude and obvious, blunt and blatant. It is obtuse viral.

It is to linkbait what sledgehammers are to Allen keys.

So, How is Hatebait Different to Linkbait?

Well, the purpose of linkbait is to get links to a specific URL, that’s it.

Haitbait inspires the mob mentality, and may, or may not result in links to a specific URL.

Cleverly crafted and executed linkbait will, most often, not attract such attention. It will always give its target good reason to link to it, that’s its purpose. It will often “fly under the radar”, avoid controversy and, most importantly of all, work. It will attract links.

In writing this I spoke with Lyndon Antcliff, King of the Linkbaiters, who gave great insight into, and had this to say about the Samantha Brick hatebait:

Picking though the bones of this, we can learn a lot of how to re-create a linbkaiting beast.

Carlsberg decided not to make linkbaiters when they realised that there’s already a Lyndon*. But, he does run Linkbait Coaching

]]>The 2 events I look forward to each year more than any other are ThinkVisibility March and ThinkVisibility September. They simply are the greatest conferences. This time was no exception.
Both in terms of the presentations and the attendees, it is a friendly, informative, face-hurtingly funny, utter belter of a weekend.

This being the sixth “ThinkVis” I have attended there are a lot of faces I am familiar with and it is always great to catch up with old friends. There are always a good number of new people too, mind and making new connections is just as satisfying. ThinkVis feels like a family gathering in many ways.

Friday Night

As always, the conference starts in style on Friday night. Wiebke and I were lucky enough to be included in a reprobate’s dinner party, which may or may not have been organised by Nichola, with some of the great and the good in attendance, and us, and Jackie, and Geoff, and Shaun Hobo, and Pete, and Alex, and Anna, and Kev, and Chelsea, and Tracey, and Paul, and Gareth, and Dan.

Seriously though, it was a great start to a great night, a night which will not in any way, shape or form, be documented here. Other than this very respectable photograph (courtesy of Jackie) of some of the people there, all of us sober too, honest.

The Conference Itself, Saturday

I have said this before, and I will say it again, if you want to get all the gen from all the talks, buy a ticket and support the greatest conference. That said, if you are really desperate, I will link to posts where talks are detailed, but seriously, buy a ticket and come along, if for nothing else then to buy me a beer.

There is something that most people will learn from most of the sessions, there’s plenty for everyone to learn in between the sessions. The people who come to Thinkvis make it what it is, both speakers and attendees.

With all that said, the sessions I enjoyed the most were:

The other sessions I attended were great too, and I heard good things about those I didn’t attend too (in particular Dan McGuire‘s Outsourcing for Cheap Bastards, which, by all accounts, had many people crossing their legs whilst laughing)

The were other great sessions, of course, the above were merely my favourites!

Tumblr

As great as it is, Tumblr allows cross posting to Twitter and Facebook, which is great, right? The obvious arguments over whether cross posting should be done automatically or not aside, it is very helpful to be able to cross post, as long as it adds value to the stream you are cross posting into, right?

When cross posting to Twitter, Tumblr lets you change the default “Photo: [URL]” format to make it more clickable on Twitter, clever, huh? If you cross post to Facebook, however, you get no opportunity to change anything. Really, Tumblr, really?

A fellow Edinburgh social media type, and more frequent tumbler than me, Jen Rankine, tested it out more thoroughly than I had. She discovered there is indeed no way to edit the title of the link Tumblr posts to Facebook, it is always the title of your Tumblr blog.

Google+

Also last week, Tac Anderson, brought up the point that ifft [ifThisThenThat] don’t have support for Google+:
Turns out, according to ifttt, Google have yet to release a full read/write API for Google+. Of course, this could be a vain attempt to curb gaming of social signals, but perhaps it is indicative of Google’s failure to launch a social success.

Perhaps it is less a case of having to exercise control, as Google are more used to, and more one of trying to find a way to filter gamed sentiment over genuine. Given that Google+ is largely used by the SEO community… just saying.

Yesterday a London based international digital marketing agency had a unicorn in their offices! Imagine that! A real live unicorn!

Not like an Oatmeal unicorn, no a real live unicorn, you know, like a white horse with a plastic horn sellotaped to its coupon.
An actual unicorn would make a tsunami of a splash on the internet, right? The internet loves unicorns, in fact the only thing the internet loves more than unicorns is bacon and kittehs! You can’t fail to go viral with unicorns!

Except you can. You absolutely can. You can even fail to rile PETA. It is possible to entirely miss critical mass despite spending astronomical amounts.

Believe it or not, it is even possible to get less views on your twitpic than you have global staff. Less views on your twitpic than half
of your global staff. For a unicorn!

Perhaps next time an agency tries a stunt like that they’ll have a bacon-scarf-wearing Nyan LOLcat riding a hoverboard. And do you know what? It won’t ‘go viral’ either.

No, for something to ‘go viral’ it needs a little more magic and a little less production.

They cynically attempted to promote their product on the back of the London riots:

They’re not the first to try such a stunt, which makes it all the more idiotic. Didn’t they read AdAge’s post about Kenneth Cole pissing off all of Twitter with his tweet about the Egyptian riots? Did they think that Econsultancy’s piece on Habitat riling Twitter when they spammed the hashtags #Iran and #Mousavi?

Post another tweet, which still marketed their popcorn, albeit offered it for free to #riotwombles & #riotcleanup. Even setting up a new email address for it.

Post a tweet apologising for the “ill-advised” tweet and stating that they want to “help in any way we can”

The Effects of Being an Arse in the Social Space

At the time of writing this, my Twitpic has had around 1250 views in the space of about an hour. That’s one person every 3 seconds getting exposed to the message, you could say it has gone a bit viral, not a lot, but a bit. Those views come from, believe it or not, only 44 tweets as the screengrab below shows (screengrab from the frankly wonderful Trak.ly):

Whereas, LoveDaPop’s special email address they set up to offer got exactly ZERO retweets:

What LoveDaPop Could / Should Do to Redeem Themselves

It’s not about deleting tweets, it’s not about apologising, it’s not about saving face. They said they want to “help in any way we can” yet it would appear they don’t have a clue about what they can actually do. Well, here are some pointers, for free:

Since you’re in London, get off your arses and go help people on the ground.

If you can’t be arsed to get involved in realtime, get involved on Twitter, don’t leave it at that one tweet.

Get someone who has a clue to educate you a bit in social media manners

Only, don’t come to me looking for help. You’re on my banned list. As is anyone else who could possibly entertain the thought that trying to market popcorn on the back of rioting, looting and human suffering is in anyway even remotely acceptable no matter the medium you use to do it.

]]>Thinkvisibility 5, the first thinkvis I’ve been to without Wiebke who stayed at home looking after Alexa, but I had a great crowd to look after me on my travels!

Before Leaving Edinburgh

The sensible thing to do when heading to a conference with a group of thirsty Scots, obviously, is to drop in past Illegal Jack’s for a BurritoBeerSponge™. Jack’s opened half an hour early, just for us! We even got a nice new booth reserved for us especially:

Leaving Edinburgh

A perhaps little known fact about international travel from Scotland, is that a case of beer is compulsory – even if it is Spanish beer and is empty before half of the journey is completed. An even less known fact is that us Scots are incredibly generous, though there is now a Norwegian bloke who knows that, hopefully he’ll do his part to dispel the vicious stereotypes about us.

Arriving in Leeds

After all that travelling a couple of beers in the hotel bar were just the ticket and was good to see some familiar, and some new, faces there: Paul Madden, Branko Rihtman and Justin Parks

Being a lightweight, and nothing to do with WeeBurnett having been a bit grumpy the night before, I had to go for a wee lie down before the pre-conference party…

Pre-Conference Party

Apres snooze it was time for me and my hat to head to the pre-conference party, as usual I got some snaps of people wearing my hat. I didn’t get round everyone, but (as always) everyone who is pictured wearing my hat has my full personal endorsement.

Ingo Bousa, who I seem to have known for years from StumbleUpon but never actually met, so it was brilliant to make his acquaintance in real time!

The first person that Wiebke and I met on the morning of the first ever Thinkvis was Steven Lilley who is now an official photographer of the conference – I do hope this snap is acceptable to you Steven ;)
Also be sure to check out Steven’s Thinkvisibility photo stream on Flickr!

Rishi Lakhani I also seem to have known for years, but only actually met at the first thinkvis – top bloke, truly top bloke.

Beers flowed relentlessly throughout and (once the bar was closed) Shaun Anderson, Richard Shove and myself were going to raid Shaun’s minibar… only to find that Shaun’s room was locked and most of the corridor was in the drink. There are a number of adjectives that I considered linking to Shaun with, but I think that UK SEO pretty much covers it best – besides just thinking the word “damp” still hurts from laughing.

Of course Richard also got a shot of my hat…

Thinkvisibility 5 – The Conference Proper

Without exception I thoroughly enjoyed all of the sessions I attended:

Self Promotion for Over-thinkers: How The Right Audience Could Change Your Life by Peter Cooper

If you’re looking for the details of the talks, well you should have been there yourself, shouldn’t you? You’ll know better for next time though won’t you?

After Party

By this point you could be excused for thinking that the entire point of the conference is to party, not true though. Granted there is a hell of a lot of partying before and after the presentations, but there should be a nugget or two for most people in most of the talks. Granted there is a lot of chatter and banter which is off-topic, but that’s what cements relationships.

During the after party for example, I confirmed my suspicion that I am useless at poker – I lasted all of 3 hands in the Jaamit fund game. I learnt that fish fingers can be used as incendiary devices, that dog’s beds are too small for people of 6 foot and over and that curtains have many uses. I discovered that great whisky is appreciated by people who sleep under manky carpets and that sometimes, just sometimes a support girdle should be worn in case your sides actually split.

Aftermath

Messrs Clarkson, Parks and Burnett raided the wee shop closest to the hotel for “medicine”. 6 bottles was all that the shop had and we bought the lot, after all travelling is thirsty work.